Pelotes is given as goat-skin: it should be goat's hair.
"Y pues el salvaje sentia tanto desmamparar su castillo" is translated: "And since the savage had resolved to abandon his castle." This should be: "Besides [or since] the savage regretted so much to abandon his castle."
Here it may be remarked that Cuellar always calls the natives of Ireland savages, which seems very ungrateful on his part, as many of them showed him great kindness. It would have been pleasanter for a translator at the present day to have softened the harsher expression by substituting native for it, as Professor O'Reilly has done; but it appears to me that this does not convey the correct meaning of what Cuellar had in view when he used the word salvaje.
Referring to MacClancy's Castle, Cuellar says: "Por lo qual no se puede ganar este castillo por agua, ni por la banda de tierra que esta mas cerca de el." Mr. Sedgwick translates it thus: "For this reason the castle is safe from attack, and is inaccessible both by water and by the strip of land that runs up to it." This would look as if the castle stood upon a promontory of the mainland, instead of being built in the lake, as Cuellar, at the beginning of the same paragraph, tells us it was.
I think the true meaning of the passage is this: "For which reason the castle could not be taken by water nor by the shore of the land that is nearest to it."
To conclude: there appears to be an important error in Mr. Sedgwick's translation, beginning with the title, and repeated in the first and last sentences of this book, besides occurring several times throughout its pages. I refer to the statement that Cuellar's letter was written to King Philip II., and to the constant use of the expression "Your Majesty" to the person he was addressing.
I cannot find the slightest evidence in support of this assumption: on the contrary, everything in the letter would seem to contradict it. It is written in a familiar, chatty style, as to a person with whom the writer was on fairly familiar terms, and was certainly not such as a captain in the Spanish navy would address to his Sovereign.
The error must, I think, have arisen from some misconception as to the meaning of the abbreviations made use of in Spanish epistolary correspondence.
In twelve instances I find that Mr. Sedgwick has apparently mistaken the initials V.m. (a capital V followed by a small m), which stand for Vuestra merced—the usual form in which untitled persons addressed each other—for V.M. (where both letters are capitals), meaning Vuestra Majestad (Your Majesty). Once (on page 12) he gives a similar rendering of the letters S.M., which stand for Su Majestad (His Majesty), although on page 104 he translates the same initials correctly. On page 98 he uses the same formula (Your Majesty) to represent the expression La Majestad (The Majesty), and on page 102 he makes it do duty for the whole expression "La Majestad del rey nuestro Señor" (the majesty of the King, our Lord).
ROBERT CRAWFORD.